it’s a respectable area. Kipling’s brother lived on this street, you know.’
‘Well, well, how wonderful,’ muttered the guvnor. ‘May I ask what your profession is, sir?’
‘I’m senior clerk with an insurance agent, sir.’
‘Tasker and Sons,’ said his wife. ‘Dunbar’s been with them twenty-two years. And I’m a singing instructor.’
‘You have a delightful voice, madam,’ said the guvnor. ‘We heard you earlier.’
‘She was taught by Mrs Welden. My wife was one of her best. She’s sung with Irene Adler at the Oxford: Lord Ulverston paid her a special compliment.’
‘That was a few years ago,’ murmured Mrs Barclay, dropping her eyes. She went to the little writing desk and opened it, pulling out a bright blue peacock’s feather. ‘When you see Birdie, give her this. Tell her I love her and miss her.’
‘And tell her I’ll buy her a new dress to match it when she comes back,’ added her husband.
The guvnor nodded. ‘We’ll do our best to help you. You did the right thing calling us.’
Before leaving, they gave us a photograph of Birdie and directions to the farm. As we walked down Saville Place, a boy with two scarves wrapped around his head came towards us out of the fog.
‘Hey lad,’ asked the guvnor, pointing back at the little house. ‘D’you know where they’ve gone, the people who lived there before the Barclays?’
‘Mr Avery’s gone to Bedford, sir,’ replied the boy, his breath coming out white from his mouth, his hands clasped under his armpits for warmth. ‘You want the address? My mum’ll have it.’
‘No, thank you. And when did the Barclays move in?’
‘Maybe two month past, sir. Maybe three.’
As we turned into the Lambeth Road, I asked him how he knew.
‘All that furniture was recently bought,’ he replied. He reached inside his waistcoat, pulled out a punnet of chocolate stars and offered me one. They were warm and melting from his having stored them so close to the heat of his chest fat. He took a couple and threw them in his mouth. ‘Not a mark on any of it. When I asked Mrs Barclay how long they’d been there she didn’t seem to know what to say. I thought that very queer. And did you notice the outlines of all those missing pictures where the wallpaper had been protected from the soot? They’d have had a fire in that room for the last few months, so those pictures weren’t long removed. The only one they had was that great ship. I had a look at the wall underneath and there was no picture trace at all, Barnett. It must have been put up recently.’
‘A bit of a guess then, sir.’
He laughed.
‘It’s always a guess, Barnett. Until confirmed. Anyway, we must watch out for those two. They’re hiding something.’
I smiled to myself as we walked. Though it would irk him to hear me say it, he was sometimes more like Sherlock Holmes than he realized. He put the last chocolate star in his mouth and dropped the empty punnet on the street.
‘What d’you think of the case?’ I asked.
‘It could be nothing, but if I were the parent I’d be worried. A weak-minded young woman being prevented seeing her family. A violent husband.’ He licked his fingers and wiped them on his britches. ‘Poor Birdie might be in a lot of trouble. The problem is, I’m not sure what we can do about it.’
Next morning we took the train from London Bridge. It rattled slow as an ox above the sooty terraces and warehouses of Bermondsey, then out through Deptford, New Cross and Lewisham. The further we got, the more the fog thinned until, just before Ladywell, it wasn’t there no more.
The guvnor put down his paper, opened the document case he’d brought, and pulled out the Barclays’ photograph. It was a picture of five women in summer bonnets standing in a park. Birdie was the shortest of them by some way. She stood open-mouthed between her mother and a young woman whose hand she held. She wore a drab cotton dress, her head tilting to the side as she looked at the young lady next to her. Birdie seemed lost in a pleasant dream.
‘I’m not familiar with the feeble-minded, Barnett,’ he said. He wheezed a little as he talked, his side whiskers spurling from his cheeks like woollen clouds. ‘I’m not sure I’ll know if she’s being coerced. Are they harder to read, d’you think?’
‘There was one lived below when I was growing up,’ I told him. ‘He used to get right cross with things. Don’t think he ever left his old ma.’
‘Little Albert’s the only one I know,’ he said, staring at the photograph. ‘I must say I’ve never felt I understood quite what’s going on in his head. Isabel had a soft spot for him.’
‘Did you hear from her over Christmas?’
The guvnor’s wife, Isabel, had left him a year or so ago and now lived with a lawyer in Cambridge. Recently she’d asked him to petition for a divorce, using her infidelity as grounds. He hadn’t done it.
‘She sent a card,’ he answered with a wave. ‘I think she’s beginning to see through that little swindler.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She asked when the building work would be finished.’
I nodded slowly, holding his gaze.
‘I’m reading between the lines, Barnett!’ he said, a little irritation in his voice. ‘If she’s wondering when our rooms are going to be finished it means she’s thinking about coming back to London. It was always him pushing her into it anyway.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up, sir,’ I said. ‘Remember what happened last time.’
He fell silent. The train stopped between stations and we waited.
‘What did you bring that briefcase for?’ I asked him.
‘I’m going to try something. But I forgot to ask about your Christmas, Barnett. Did you enjoy it?’
I nodded. I’d spent it alone getting hammered in a pub on Bankside where nobody knew me. I couldn’t tell him that, just as I couldn’t tell him why. It had been more than six months, and still I couldn’t tell him.
‘My sister cooked a bird,’ he said. ‘Lewis doesn’t celebrate, of course, although he did eat more than his share. Ettie was off delivering sugar mice to the street children for half the day. Then Lewis was abed with cramps. What a glutton he is, and don’t ask me about my sister. Lord, how that woman can eat. And she’s the cheek to urge me to take purgatives. Ah, that reminds me.’
He reached inside his coat and held out a knitted thing to me.
‘It’s a Christmas gift, Barnett. A muffler. That thing you’re wearing’s in tatters.’
He’d never given
